KUTV — Oct 18 — TRUE promises safer relationships through background checks but admits that sex offenders and convicted felons can still make their way into the site. Convicted child molester and registered sex offendor, Robert Wells, registered on the site. “If we find [a member has] a felony conviction, we're going to turn [them] in for wire fraud,” said CEO Herb Vest. TRUE uses a criminal screening company called "Rapsheets," which has ~94% of U.S. felony convictions,” said Vest.
He says Wells lives in a country that does not provide criminal data to certain companies. A quick search on the government-funded national sex offender registry – and we found Robert Wells. Vest says the sex offender registry isn't commercially feasible to use. Rapsheets performs thousands of background checks instantaneously. “There's no database, there's nothing I could do to possibly get all of the convicted felons,” said Vest. TRUE will debut a new, more thorough data provider early next year which should nab 96% of criminals.
Mark Brooks: TRUE is doing the best it can with the services currently available. If other major dating sites had offered background checks perhaps the rate of improvement would have been faster. Rapsheets offers affordable, value background checks. They're not 100%, but they're better than nothing. Other, more thorough, services exist but are cost prohibitive. The arguments from other sites against bg checks goes as follows. We don't offer bg checks because: 1. They're way short of being foolproof (and fairly pricey), 2. Most felony charges are talked down to misdemeanors and misdemeanors are way more difficult to search for, 3. Users can lie about their identity which renders the background checks useless. TRUE states on their home page "If you are a convicted criminal, be aware that you could be guilty of fraud and subject to civil and criminal penalties." That's more compelling. That's where the teeth are in TRUE safety offerings.
fyi, TRUE's business development team made their background checking system available to other dating sites several months ago. Noone has taken them up on it yet. Enabling their system on other dating sites would undermine their differentiation but proves they are more committed to the cause of safety than they are given credit for. Checks would be ~$5 each using the Rapsheet system.
Mark,
Here we go again! 😉
How does an established player effectively add the background check to their system when they have 10’s of millions of clients. By the way, can True members contact non-paying and non-background checked members? I think the answer is “yes”. I wonder how many of their members think they are meeting someone with a background check when they actually aren’t.
I will say their adult focused ads are pretty darn eye catching. (Maybe they should do AIDS tests instead) I think the interesting one to me was the “True Christian Ad” where the landing page was actually to a scantily clad young girl in a very provocative pose. (A mixed brand message to me but maybe they are on to something) They have even picked up on the adult industry scammish move of offering 3 days free and slamming your credit card for 50 bucks in three days for the thousands who don’t cancel promptly. Pretty hypocritical don’t you think? “Oh – we need a background check on the home page because people are ‘too lazy’ to read a policy statement according to Herb’s son- but we will gladly slam your credit card after 3 days because people are ‘too lazy’ to cancel.” Yes – it’s obvious they are very consumer driven. Might be nice buzzwords in a staff meeting – “hey we care about the consumer but nobody else does” – but actions do speak louder than words.